Ever since Knight Industries fitted a Paxton Supercharger powered by 3 electric motors and used it to increase a 1993 Dodge Viper R/T torque to 600hp from the stock 400hp, I have been fascinated with the concept. He ended up selling his product for $5500 but went bankrupt trying to develop a working one and never recouped the money he had invested. Then Phantom Supercharger came along and coupled a brushless motor to a small T3 turbo and successfully generated 200whp out of the AE86/BRZ. The designer sold the design to a Finnish (or Swedish) company that designed a more powerful version that was able to produce 350 whp but at a price tag of $3500-$4000 but it was still restricted to smaller displacement engines.Through careful study, reverse engineering, and simple math I have managed to create one that easily outperforms everything on the market for a cost of about $3000 but .....it has some draw backs.
1 -T76 housing or larger (massive turbo means more air and less restriction for your motor when not on boost).
Problem areas: Because of it's size, you need a fairly beefy motor that has enough torque to instantly spool this bad boy up.
2- High torque motor AND High rpm ( to be in the efficiency range of a turbo according to most turbo maps, you need an rpm capability of 70,000 at least)
Problem area: most high rpm motors have low torque and high torque motors are low rpm. To overcome this obstacle, I had to source a 100,000 rpm capable brushless motor that has a burst rating of 7800 watts...and it can be run on 24V
3-Motor controller- To control a motor like this you need a controller that can handle between 300-400 amps. These aren't cheap.
4.Power supply- In order to supply enough juice for this motor/controller combo, you need a MINIMUM of 2 car batteries. (in addition to your normal battery)
Problem area: A standard 90 AMP lead acid battery is about 65 amp hours. That means 2 of these hooked in series at 24V only gives you about 6 minutes of continuous run time before they are drained half way (you don't want to drain more than half way if you want to keep you battery life)
This also means you have to run AA cable from the turbo under your hood to trunk where the batteries are...also not cheap
5. Onboard charging- You need to charge your 24V battery bank with your 12V alternator. You need a buck/step up/boost charger to convert your 12V to 24+V to charge your battery bank.
Problem area: Most buck chargers are only 10-20 AMPs which will take 3-6 hours of driving to charge your batteries. The best option I could find was a 50AMP boost charger that would talk about an hour to charge if the batteries were fully drained. 30 minutes if half way drained....BUT expensive
6. Remote On/Off switch- You can't just leave a battery bank with a constant current draw to your turbo controller on at all times and you need a switch that can handle 300-400Amps. I found a remote option as well as a manual marine switch to do the trick. However, if you go the manual option, you have to run AA cable to the switch inside the cabin (which I did by cutting out the bottom of my center console....this was before I found the remote option).
7. Throttle control-It's one thing to get power to your turbo, it's another to control the rpm for tuning purposes...HINT: 100,000 rpm on a T76 will easily blow the motor on anything but a fully race prepped and tuned 1uzfe with lowered compression and supporting fuel mods.
Problem area-I could find no easily accessible electronics (because I am not an expert in that field) that could be used to do this. After much trial and error, I used the internals from RC transmitter because they could be had with both throttle sensitivity and Max throttle trim adjustments.
The take away? Essentially I have a rechargeable nitrous bottle. I can use it in 10-15 second bursts which means for normal driving I never run out..but for all out racing or drag racing, I have a limited number of uses before it runs out and must be charged. Weight difference? Slightly more than a typical turbo setup because the 2 (or 4 if you want double the run time) batteries weigh more than a turbo manifold and subsequent exhaust routing.
The cost ?About $3000.
The smile? Priceless.
drive.google.com
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1 -T76 housing or larger (massive turbo means more air and less restriction for your motor when not on boost).
Problem areas: Because of it's size, you need a fairly beefy motor that has enough torque to instantly spool this bad boy up.
2- High torque motor AND High rpm ( to be in the efficiency range of a turbo according to most turbo maps, you need an rpm capability of 70,000 at least)
Problem area: most high rpm motors have low torque and high torque motors are low rpm. To overcome this obstacle, I had to source a 100,000 rpm capable brushless motor that has a burst rating of 7800 watts...and it can be run on 24V
3-Motor controller- To control a motor like this you need a controller that can handle between 300-400 amps. These aren't cheap.
4.Power supply- In order to supply enough juice for this motor/controller combo, you need a MINIMUM of 2 car batteries. (in addition to your normal battery)
Problem area: A standard 90 AMP lead acid battery is about 65 amp hours. That means 2 of these hooked in series at 24V only gives you about 6 minutes of continuous run time before they are drained half way (you don't want to drain more than half way if you want to keep you battery life)
This also means you have to run AA cable from the turbo under your hood to trunk where the batteries are...also not cheap
5. Onboard charging- You need to charge your 24V battery bank with your 12V alternator. You need a buck/step up/boost charger to convert your 12V to 24+V to charge your battery bank.
Problem area: Most buck chargers are only 10-20 AMPs which will take 3-6 hours of driving to charge your batteries. The best option I could find was a 50AMP boost charger that would talk about an hour to charge if the batteries were fully drained. 30 minutes if half way drained....BUT expensive
6. Remote On/Off switch- You can't just leave a battery bank with a constant current draw to your turbo controller on at all times and you need a switch that can handle 300-400Amps. I found a remote option as well as a manual marine switch to do the trick. However, if you go the manual option, you have to run AA cable to the switch inside the cabin (which I did by cutting out the bottom of my center console....this was before I found the remote option).
7. Throttle control-It's one thing to get power to your turbo, it's another to control the rpm for tuning purposes...HINT: 100,000 rpm on a T76 will easily blow the motor on anything but a fully race prepped and tuned 1uzfe with lowered compression and supporting fuel mods.
Problem area-I could find no easily accessible electronics (because I am not an expert in that field) that could be used to do this. After much trial and error, I used the internals from RC transmitter because they could be had with both throttle sensitivity and Max throttle trim adjustments.
The take away? Essentially I have a rechargeable nitrous bottle. I can use it in 10-15 second bursts which means for normal driving I never run out..but for all out racing or drag racing, I have a limited number of uses before it runs out and must be charged. Weight difference? Slightly more than a typical turbo setup because the 2 (or 4 if you want double the run time) batteries weigh more than a turbo manifold and subsequent exhaust routing.
The cost ?About $3000.
The smile? Priceless.
20230722_152755.jpg
drive.google.com
20230722_152839.jpg
drive.google.com
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In my case I, just looked for a motor that would be able to use 24V because it made it simpler to find boost converters to run the charger off of the alternator. If you use a 24v lithium, you just need a lithium buck charger which is similar in price to a lead acid charger. If you have the money, lithium is a much better bet because you get twice the run time out of the same battery and longer life. In theory, it pays for itself many times over.
